Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas replaces Gita Gopinath as IMF chief economist

The International Monetary Fund has appointed Pierre-Olivier Gourinchas as its next economic counsellor and director of the Research Department (RES). He will succeed Gita Gopinath, who assumed the office on January 1, 2019.

Gourinchas will take over as IMF’s new chief economist from January 24 initially on a part-time basis so as to fulfill some of his prior commitments as a scholar. He will transition to full-time on April 1, 2022.

Meanwhile, as IMF announced on December 2 last year, Gopinath is headed to join IMF’s management team as the new first deputy managing director. Gopinath, who was scheduled to return to her teaching duties at Harvard University this month, will begin her new role from January 21.

“I am very pleased to announce that Pierre-Olivier will join us as the fund’s next chief economist,” said IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva announcing Gourinchas’ appointment. “He brings a stellar track record of scholarship and intellectual leadership in macroeconomic areas critical to our work – from global imbalances and capital flows to the stability of the international monetary and financial system, and more recently, to economic policies for the pandemic era.”

Before his upcoming stint at IMF, Gourinchas has had a splendid career in academics. He is currently working with the University of California at Berkeley, which he joined in 2003, as the Faculty Director of the Clausen Center for International Business & Policy, and the S.K. and Angela Chan Professor of Global Management.

Before going to UC Berkeley, he was the assistant professor of economics at Princeton University from 1998 to 2003. Notably, Gourinchas was one of the advisors for Gopinath’s doctoral dissertation while she was pursuing Ph.D. in economics from Princeton University in 2001. Before that, he was assistant professor of economics at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.

The French economist has also served as program director of international finance and macroeconomics at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). From 2012 to 2013, he was a member of the French Council of Economic Advisors to the Prime Minister.

From 2009 to 2016, Gourinchas was IMF visiting scholar and the editor-in-chief of the IMF Economic Review, the fund’s premier research journal. He has also served as co-editor of the American Economic Review journal, as well as on the editorial boards of other leading economic publications, including the Journal of International Economics.

Gourinchas received a B.A. in Physics from École Polytechnique, an MA in Economics from École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, and an MA in Engineering from École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées. He received his Ph.D. in 1996 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.